My son will be 14 next month. He starts his second year at secondary school on Friday. He'll do his first state examination, the Junior Certificate, in summer 2015. Pictured is a selection of just some of the textbooks he is required to have. This is about 60% of the total set, not counting copybooks, homework journal etc. This lot alone weighs more than 10 kilos. Luckily, his school runs a book loan scheme, so we've only had to pay a fraction of the total cost of these books. So, I'm not complaining about the cost. My son gets quite a lot of homework. Each evening he has homework for between 6 and 8 of his subjects. That means he is carrying at least one textbook and one copybook per subject home in his bag. Some mornings last year I could not physically lift his schoolbag. He's a little bit taller than me, but fairly skinny. I watch him staggering down the road to the bus stop with a heavy weight on his back. David Hopkins wrote last week about digital textbooks and ...